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A newbie sets out: Braving Mandarin. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 33 of 94 27 January 2012 at 5:48am | IP Logged |
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Directions - take a look at
https://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/parking- the-car https://popupchinese.com/lessons/elementary/beijing-city-dir ections You'll have to sign up for a free ID to listen to these. Haircut - There's a dialog in CLO, though in Level 5, lesson 259. That website should let you listen to the lesson which will have the dialog embedded. Should warn you that the majority of the lesson will be Mandarin...eg you'll have to pick out the dialog. 你今天戴帽子 Nǐ jīntiān dài màozi You’re wearing a hat today 看起来好酷！ Kàn qǐlái hǎo kù! Looks very cool! 不要再说了 Búyào zài shuō le Don’t say that again 我戴着帽子 Wǒ dài zhe màozi I’m wearing this hat 是因为我刚刚去剪头发 Shì yīnwèi wǒ gānggāng qù jiǎn tóufǎ Because I just got a haircut 可是我觉得这个髮型好丑 Kěshì wǒ juéde zhège fǎxíng hǎo chǒu But I think hairstyle is very ugly 为什么?是理发店他们的问题吗? Wèi shénme? Shì lǐfǎdiàn tāmen de wèntí ma? Why is that? Was it a problem with the barber shop? 对啊 Duì a Yes 这是我第一次到那里剪头发 Zhè shì wǒ dì yī cì dào nàlǐ jiǎn tóufǎ This was my first time getting a haircut there 因为他们的价钱比别家的便宜 Yīnwèi tāmen de jiàqián bǐ bié jiā de piányí Since their prices are cheaper than other places 不过，剪完后 Búguò, jiǎn wán hòu But after they finished cutting it 我才发现，那里的员工 Wǒ cái fāxiàn, nàlǐ de yuángōng I realized that most of their employees there 大部分都还是学生 Dà bùfèn dōu háishì xuéshēng Were still students 所以他们剪头发的技术还不太好 Suǒyǐ tāmen jiǎn tóufǎ de jìshù hái bú tài hǎo So their hair-cutting skills were still not very good 那帮你剪头发的那个人 Nà bāng nǐ jiǎn tóufǎ de nàge rén So the person who cut your hair 他犯了什么错误？ Tā fàn le shénme cuòwù? What mistake did he make? 我记得当时很清楚地跟他说 Wǒ jìde dāngshí hěn qīngchǔ de gēn tā shuō I remember at that time telling him very clearly 我想要留长前面的头发 Wǒ xiǎngyào liú cháng qiánmiàn de tóufǎ I would like to leave the front of my hair a little longer 所以不要剪得太短 Suǒyǐ búyào jiǎn de tài duǎn So don’t cut it too short there 后面的，可以剪短一点没关系 Hòumiàn de, kěyǐ jiǎn duǎn yīdiǎn méi guānxì The back of my hair could be cut shorter, that’s okay 结果呢？ Jiéguǒ ne? So what was the end result? 他听错了 Tā tīng cuò le He heard me wrong 现在前面的头发变得很短 Xiànzài qiánmiàn de tóufǎ biàn de hěn duǎn Right now the front of my hair has become very short 可是后面的还是很长 Kěshì hòumiàn de háishì hěn cháng But the back of my hair is still very long 回家的时候 Huíjiā de shíhòu When I went home 我弟弟还把我看成 Wǒ dìdi hái bǎ wǒ kànchéng My little brother thought that I was 是一九八〇年那个时候的歌手 Shì yī jiǔ bā líng nián nàge shíhòu de gēshǒu A singer from the 1980s 一直取笑我 Yīzhí qǔxiào wǒ He kept making fun of me 那怎么办？ Nà zěnme bàn? So what to do now? 所以我刚刚又约了另外一家理发店 Suǒyǐ wǒ gānggāng yòu yuē le lìngwài yī jiā lǐfǎdiàn So I just made another appointment with another barber shop 希望他们可以把我的头发剪得好看一点 Xīwàng tāmen kěyǐ bǎ wǒde tóufǎ jiǎn de hǎokàn yīdiǎn I hope they can cut my hair and make me look better 祝你好运！ Zhù nǐ hǎo yùn! Good luck! I suggest going a bit easier on your English speaking co-workers as their behavior is probably a knee jerk reaction. Some immigrants don't necessary adjust well to living away from home. Update: changed punctuation Edited by Snowflake on 27 January 2012 at 4:52pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 34 of 94 27 January 2012 at 2:36pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the lines really appreciated, When I find a moment I will get started.
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| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 35 of 94 27 January 2012 at 2:43pm | IP Logged |
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That trip with the boss happened today, so less study than usual. Though the trip was immensely enjoyable and for once I had a full stomach, happy days. I also got to see the much wanted drums and dancing. While most of the day was spent in English I did take the opportunity to ask some Chinese related questions. I was also more vocal with the guard to the complex, seems he wants me to learn, as he always corrected my utterances, well one utterance it was just a couple of sentences but it is a start.
As one of the other English speakers were there, I also decided to be flat out honest with my feelings on the matter. While he seemed to understand my priorities and agree in some respects, he did refer to some of them as sadistic. He very much belongs in the “study, then only speak when ready” group. Something I have learned does not really work, as it is very easy to never be ready. I did no talking to myself before bed, last night. The reason being I went to bed late because I was up for an hour trying to text chat to some random person online. Well I can not really call it a chat since I was jumping into an online dictionary at every new sentence but it was an actual interaction. No progress was made on the short term ad hoc goals due to time shortages, though the outing was factored into my plans so there is no concern regarding this. Things are also a bit warmer, at least I not wearing gloves to do any typing tonight. Turns out one of the potential language exchange partners is also a Go player. Great news, shame he is in Tapei. Much to far for me to travel for a good sit down game, online it is! Current Status -Assimil - Shadowing lessons 51-66 30 minutes - Scriptorium lessons 47-50 60 minutes - Assimil method lesson 33 45 minutes Other TV &nbs p; &nbs p; 120 minutes Anki &n bsp; &n bsp; 60 minutes text chat &n bsp; &n bsp; 60 minutes Total & nbsp; & nbsp; 395 minutes ( approx 6.5 hours) Operation barbershop - Nothing completed - on time 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 36 of 94 29 January 2012 at 2:50pm | IP Logged |
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Well a weekend passes and all is well. I have managed to score a bit of food so my stomach is not grumbling as much, though I am having to wear gloves again. How I miss central heating!
I find now I have a sense of loneliness creeping in, I find it strange as back in the UK I had no social life either, yet it never affected me as much as it does here. The longer I am here the more apparent it becomes that I must keep pushing forward, even if it is only to maintain my sanity. Getting out of bed is becoming more difficult, I frequently now sleep more than 10 hours and have not been out of bed before 12 for the last two weeks, though I dare say the cold has a part to play in that. It is not fun waking up to see breath vapour, I thought those days were behind me when I left the army. In the lift for the first time I saw people, I have no idea why but I find lifts less imposing environments, such that I actually made an effort to speak. Problem was I had nothing to say. Lack of vocabulary strikes again. I dug in my head so hard to find something that I can string together, all I could come up with was, “ do you like to eat sausages?”. I know very little about Chinese culture but I am sure in most places if a strange man said that too me in a lift, I would feel rather uncomfortable. So naturally I decided not to say anything as my other words were air plane, noodles and bread. I do think any of them would have been looked upon favourably. A word list has been assembled for operation barbershop. I will consider it a success if I go in and come out still with hair, and more importantly if I managed to say something. Lacking anything definite, I have no recourse but to resort to word list study, something I often see recommendations against. Haircut woods are quite the boon to me, as they are easy to visualise, I seem to learn nothing if I can not get some sort of image of it, be it a physical or mental image ( all my old school books were just a mass of doodles and mind maps). I loathe to add anything new to the time hungry SRS beast ( which I am now considering uninstalling). I am eager to see how well I will do with this light word list, I am in the market for an SRS alternative now. I have come to despise the demands it puts on my time and then giving too little reward in compensation. One of the potential language partners has stopped sending me messages since I told them I am pretty much a beginner. So that leaves just one candidate. I am getting no more new messages and no one is responding to mine. While I am hopeful this one does indeed become a language exchange partner, she lives an hour away by train in a small local place and works weekdays whereas I work weekends. It is certainly not ideal, but I am happy to find someone to potentially talk too. Loneliness is no laughing matter. Even more so for me, now we are approaching what is for me the worst day of the year ( which I normally cope with by just booking the day off work and sleeping the day away!). Finally I have a tolerance to the accent of the pimsleur narrator and I can listen to it listen with out grinding my teeth. So at last I can eventually come to a more content based opinion of it, rather than “ Argh my ears! Throw it away!” . Though the fact that I had to build up a tolerance to the accent, is a black mark in my book. As is constantly answering “ I am American” while it is just a small unimportant thing I would have much preferred an option to say “ I am not American” still counting as a correct answer. Which I do anyway and just give the inanimate recording the two fingered salute every time it tells me the 'correct' answer. That will show it, it knows not to mess with me now. Though on a more serious note I do deliberately choose to give the opposite of the 'correct' answer since when 'live' I do not want to mindlessly spurt out something regarding me that I have just learnt to parrot, that is not true. After a bunch of moaning it would not be complete with a least some sort of minor victory. I not only manage to ask to buy something ina shop but they understood. A minor victory, but I was due for something encouring to happen, to try and show me if I can just endure all the frustrations I am going through a big door will open for me..hopefully. Current status:- Saturday - Assimil - shadowing lessons 52 - 67 30 minutes - Scriptorium lessons 48 - 51 35 minutes - Assimil method lesson 35 22 minute - up to lesson 39 for background ( removed first 7 lessons, and will do now for every 7 new lessons added) TV 30 minutes Anki 70 minutes Self talk 10 minutes Operation barber shop - assembled wordlist - on time - 30 minutes TOTAL 227 minutes Sunday - Assimil -Shadowing 53-68 60 minutes - Scriptorium lessons 50 -52 42 mintues - Assimil lesson 36 31 minutes TV 60 minutes Pimsleur 30 minutes Self talk 10 minutes Anki 45 minutes Operation barber shop - World list study - on time - 40 minutes TOTAL 318 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 37 of 94 30 January 2012 at 1:39pm | IP Logged |
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For the first time, I came across a pimsleur lesson that I found vaguely amusing, well ...considering what is on Chinese TV most things are beginning to look interesting now! For those who do not know what it is like...think a reality TV program, mix it with a talent show where eating balloons is considered a good act, add lots of presenter talking and slapstick cartoon sound effects and you get Chinese TV! To be fair there are a few gems among that dust, but I suppose my current lack of ability to read any sort of program list means I am not able to find all the gems, given there are not that many of them, finding them by randomly channel flicking does not have good odds! Though I suspect most do not watch TV, every night comes with a barrage of fireworks. Some major cities have now banned them, but here they are still allowed here and are available in plentiful amounts, unlike food!
Finally went to the next step up in bit rate with my audio, I looked into it and supposedly only the ear of an audio enthusiast should be able to tell the difference between these bit rates for speech. I honestly care little for telling the difference , I just want to know if it will make a difference to the effect that I discovered before I went from my original bit rate to the one I am now leaving behind. I am liking my current flirt with studying word lists, though of course while liking does help ultimately its worth must be judged by its effectiveness. Given my particular learning persuasion, every word comes with some sort of doodle attached, my drawing skills are poor but my imagination is far more powerful, sometimes I wish I could put to paper what goes through my head. Added around 15 new words as part of the operation barbershop, and then threw some phrases containing those words into ...(sigh) SRS. Tomorrow will mark the last day for vocabulary and phrase acquisition, then on the 1st I intend to begin the perfectly sane barber shop role play in my pokey little abode. Current Status - Assimil - Shadowing lessons 54-69 30 minutes - Scriptorium lessons 51-53 45 minutes - Assimil method lesson 37 62 minutes Operation barbershop - wordlist study - on time - 84 minutes TV 60 minutes Pimsleur lesson 9 - 30 minutes Anki - 60 minutes Total 371 mintues ( approx 6 hours) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 38 of 94 02 February 2012 at 1:36pm | IP Logged |
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Time for another log entry.
I find pimsleur is now slowly growing on me, now that I have come to terms with the accent of the narrator. While I tried out pimsleur purely for some basic production practice, I have found the speed of the Chinese matches what I hear from the TV so I am quite happy with that aspect also. Despite waiting for more time before starting remembering the hanzi, I have already started since Tuesday. Due to already having done remembering the Kanji I have taken the approach of only doing those with have a differing keyword or have been simplified. After a few short sessions Iam now at number 245. I am not sure how much overlap there is with RTK but I expect to burn through it pretty quickly ready for the release of volume 2 in a few months. Operation barbershop is going smoothly, the first role-play session was fine but for some reason the second one was much harder, I had to resort to looking back at my word/phrase collection. I believe I have all the vocab and phrases I need and is just a case now of fitting it all into place ready for the impending deadline trying to sneak its way up. Since I still had the dark clouds billowing above my head I relented and set off a local ex-pat bar for some relief and to dispel the gloomy clouds somewhat. Though it still had some useful language learning for me, since I ran through my barbershop words with the person behind the bar and revived some useful pronunciation corrections and some valuable writing advice, seems my radical were too spaced out and I need to squish them together more or people will not recognise them. The 10 mins self talk has degenerated a little mostly due to my being inefficient with my time management and finishing things too late. Though at least I have managed something each night. While I am still exchanging e-mails with the two earlier mentioned potential language partners nothing concrete has actually happened yet, I am beginning to wonder if I will get anywhere with it. I am also currently riding the wave of a small boost in morale, as I noted that I am almost at the assimil passive wave and with the shadowing well into the second book. So to celebrate I of course took on more work, I am now experimenting with the so called gold list that I became aware of after seeing it on some recent posts in this forum. It seems though now I have to plan for some days with no study, as I have been given my marching orders for going to Hong Kong on the 22nd Feb to return on the 23rd. They have no given me much time to get orientated and get done what I need to do, that’s for sure. The issue is further compounded by me having to treck across cities to Shanghai and then somehow find my way to the airport. My knees are shaking at the mere thought of little ol'me and me terrible language skills trying to get this done all by myself. It would seem my new task is at hand, complete operation barbershop then operation 'Hong Kong journey' begins! Current Status (over 3 days) Assimil - Shadowing lessons 55- 71 90 minutes - Scriptorium lessons 52- 56 107 minutes - Assimil method lessons 38,39,49 161 minutes Operation barber shop - Word study finshed, roleplay began - on time 92 minutes Anki 169 minutes RTH 104 minutes Gold 35 minutes Pimleur lessons 10,11,12 90 minutes TV 180 minutes Self talk 20 minutes Total 1046 minutes (approx 17.5 hours = 6hr/day) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4698 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English* | Message 39 of 94 02 February 2012 at 2:41pm | IP Logged |
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Sounds like a good adventure out there. Keep up the good work.
What is gold list? or is it something for more advanced learners? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 40 of 94 07 February 2012 at 2:56pm | IP Logged |
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http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=19713&PN=1&TPN=1
Gold list is somehthing I cam across on this forum. To me it seems to be a rather less intensive almost SRS like varient except with equal intervals. I thought I would give it a try since compared to most other things there is no huge time commitment to it as far as I see and it if does not turn out so well, it will not be a huge amount of time wasted. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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